By Steve Gorman
Aug 7 (Reuters) – New Jersey civil rights officials have opened an investigation into the treatment of detainees at a controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Newark run by the private prison company GEO Group, the state attorney general said on Friday.
A statement announcing delivery of investigative subpoenas in the civil rights probe of Delaney Hall came after a man from El Salvador, Edwin Lopez-Cornejo, died in custody on Saturday after suffering what ICE called a medical emergency.
Delaney Hall earlier this year was the scene of protests that led to clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement personnel.
The man’s family on Tuesday accused facility operators of failing to provide vital medical attention to Lopez-Cornejo, who they said suffered from health issues such as high blood pressure, diabetes and epilepsy, and relied on several medications to keep those conditions under control.
His mother, Maria Cornejo, said her son had called the day before his death and told her he lost feeling in half his face and arm. Relatives demanded an independent investigation of his death.
ICE said Lopez-Cornejo received proper medical care and was seen by health professionals.
The newly launched state investigation “will focus on whether any action or inaction by GEO Group employees violated the civil rights of people detained at the facility,” Attorney General Jennifer Davenport’s office said in the statement.
There was no immediate reply from ICE, the Department of Homeland Security or GEO Group to requests by Reuters for comment.
Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed facility, has been a flashpoint for protests over complaints of spoiled food, squalid, unsanitary bathroom conditions, faulty ventilation and inadequate medical care. Two local Democratic politicians helping to spearhead the demonstrations, U.S. Representative LaMonica McIver and Mayor Ras Baraka, were arrested outside the facility in May in what they said were politically motivated acts of intimidation.
Democratic New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill later ordered state police to assume control of the area around Delaney after increasingly tense face-offs between protesters and federal officers at the jail.
Complaints have been lodged against other migrant detention centers, with more than 50 people dying in ICE custody nationwide since President Donald Trump returned to office in January of last year and launched a sweeping deportation campaign.
(Reporting and writing by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Sergio Non and Chris Reese)
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